In just a few short years, Twitter has evolved from the micro-blogging tool of choice amongst tech insiders to a truly mainstream, global phenomenon that major brands use to interact with their customers. But the new landscape of social media-powered brand management is still fraught with the same kind of security risks inherent in email and on websites, a fact that fast food chain Burger King learned firsthand on Monday when the company's Twitter account was taken over by hackers.

Around noon Eastern time on Monday, Burger King's Twitter account profile image was switched to the iconic golden arches logo of its top rival, McDonald's. The background image was also changed to match the real background image shown on McDonald's Twitter account, along with a fake message telling followers that Burger King had been acquired by its competitor. The modified profile information also included a fake link to what was meant to look like a Burger King press release.

In addition to the false business statements, the hackers also posted several messages that included street slang and obscenities, including racial epithets. The account was quickly suspended by Twitter, but not before the high-profile messages got the attention of the Twitter community, sparking a number of retweets of the hacker's messages from the hijacked account.

The account has since been revived. "Interesting day here at BURGER KING, but we're back! Welcome to our new followers. Hope you all stick around!" the company tweeted yesterday.

Burger King later apologized for the hack. "Earlier today, our official BK Twitter Account was compromised by unauthorized users. Upon learning of this incident, our social media teams immediately began working with Twitter security administrators to suspend the compromised account until we could re-establish our brand's official Twitter page," Bryson Thornton, director of global communications at Burger King, said in a statement provided to the AP. "We apologize to our loyal fans and followers, whom might have received unauthorized tweets from our account. We are pleased to announce that the account is now active again."

Thornton, a veteran of Heinz and FedEx who just joined Burger King last summer, is himself a casual user of the micro-blogging service, calling himself a "Twitter novice" on his own profile description, a status that is likely to change after such a high-profile brand management snafu.

Interestingly, as Burger King continued to seek out the culprits behind the hack while restoring the account to its previous state, McDonald's posted the following message on its own Twitter account: "We empathize with our @BurgerKing counterparts. Rest assured, we had nothing to do with the hacking."

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